Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

In England a somewhat similar situation existed, so that even in the middle of the twentieth century the Members of the Court of the Bank of England were chiefly associates of the various old “merchant banking” firms such as Baring Brothers, Morgan Grenfell, Lazard Brothers, and others.

In a secondary position, outside the central core, are the commercial banks, called in England the “joint-stock banks,” and on the Continent frequently known as “deposit banks.” These include such famous names as Midland Bank, Lloyd’s Bank, Barclays Bank in England, the National City Bank in the United States, the Credit Lyonnais in France, and the Darmstädter Bank in Germany.

Outside this secondary ring is a third, more peripheral, assemblage of institutions that have little financial power but do have the very significant function of mobilizing funds from the public. This includes a wide variety of savings banks, insurance firms, and trust companies.

Naturally, these arrangements vary greatly from place to place, especially as the division of banking functions and powers are not the same in all countries. In France and England the private bankers exercised their powers through the central bank and had much more influence on the government and on foreign policy and much less influence on industry, because in these two countries, unlike Germany, Italy, the United States, or Russia, private savings were sufficient to allow much of industry to finance itself without recourse either to bankers or government. In the United States much industry was financed by investment bankers directly, and the power of these both on industry and on government was very great, while the central bank (the New York Federal Reserve Bank) was established late (1913) and became powerful much later (after financial capitalism was passing from the scene). In Germany industry was financed and controlled by the discount banks, while the central bank was of little power or significance before 1914. In Russia the role of the government was dominant in much of economic life, while in Italy the situation was backward and complicated.

We have said that two of the five factors which determined the value of money (and thus the price level of goods) are the supply and the demand for money. The supply of money in a single country was subject to no centralized, responsible control in most countries over recent centuries. Instead, there were a variety of controls of which some could be influenced by bankers, some could be influenced by the government, and some could hardly be influenced by either. Thus, the various parts of the pyramid of money were but loosely related to each other. Moreover, much of this looseness arose from the fact that the controls were compulsive in a deflationary direction and were only permissive in an inflationary direction.

This last point can be seen in the fact that the supply of gold could be decreased but could hardly be increased. If an ounce of gold was added to the point of the pyramid in a system where law and custom allowed 10 percent reserves on each level, it could permit an increase of deposits equivalent to $2067 on the uppermost level. If such an ounce of gold were withdrawn from a fully expanded pyramid of money, this would compel a reduction of deposits by at least this amount, probably by a refusal to renew loans.

Throughout modern history the influence of the gold standard has been deflationary, because the natural output of gold each year, except in extraordinary times, has not kept pace with the increase in output of goods. Only new supplies of gold, or the suspension of the gold standard in wartime, or the development of new kinds of money (like notes and checks) which economize the use of gold, have saved our civilization from steady price deflation over the last couple of centuries. As it was, we had two long periods of such deflation from 1818 to 1850 and from T872 to about 1897. The three surrounding periods of inflation (1790--1817, 1850-1872, 1897-1921) were caused by (i) the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon when most countries were not on gold; (2) the new gold strikes of California and Alaska in 1849-1850, followed by a series of wars, which included the Crimean War of 1854-1856, the Austrian-French War of 1859, the American Civil War of 1861-1865, The Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars of 1866 and 1870, and even the Russo-Turkish War of 1877; and (3) the Klondike and Transvaal gold strikes of the late 1890’s, supplemented by the new cyanide method of refining gold (about 1897) and the series of wars from the Spanish-American War of 1898-1899, the Boer War of 1899-1902, and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, to the almost uninterrupted series of wars in the decade 1911-1921. In each case, the three great periods of war ended with an extreme deflationary crisis (1819, 1873, 1921) as the influential Money Power persuaded governments to reestablish a deflationary monetary unit with a high gold content.

The obsession of the Money Power with deflation was partly a result of their concern with money rather than with goods, but was also founded on other factors, one of which was paradoxical. The paradox arose from the fact that the basic economic conditions of the nineteenth century were deflationary, with a money system based on gold and an industrial system pouring out increasing supplies of goods, but in spite of falling prices (with its increasing value of money) the interest rate tended to fall rather than to rise. This occurred because the relative limiting of the supply of money in business was not reflected in the world of finance where excess profits of finance made excess funds available for lending. Moreover, the old traditions of merchant banking continued to prevail in financial capitalism even to its end in 1931. It continued to emphasize bonds rather than equity securities (stocks), to favor government issues rather than private offerings, and to look to foreign rather than to domestic investments. Until 1825, government bonds made up almost the whole of securities on the London Stock Exchange. In 1843, such bonds, usually foreign, were 80 percent of the securities registered, and in 1875 they were still 68 percent. The funds available for such loans were so great that there were, in the nineteenth century, sometimes riots by subscribers seeking opportunities to buy security flotations; and offerings from many remote places and obscure activities commanded a ready sale. The excess of savings led to a fall in the price necessary to hire money, so that the interest rate on British government bonds fell from 4.42 percent in 1820 to 3.11 in 1850 to 2.76 in 1900. This tended to drive savings into foreign fields where, on the whole, they continued to seek government issues and fixed interest securities. All this served to strengthen the merchant bankers’ obsession both with government influence and with deflation (which would increase value of money and interest rates).

Another paradox of banking practice arose from the fact that bankers, who loved deflation, often acted in an inflationary fashion from their eagerness to lend money at interest. Since they make money out of loans, they are eager to increase the amounts of bank credit on loan. But this is inflationary. The conflict between the deflationary ideas and inflationary practices of bankers had profound repercussions on business. The bankers made loans to business so that the volume of money increased faster than the increase in goods. The result was inflation. When this became clearly noticeable, the bankers would flee to notes or specie by curtailing credit and raising discount rates. This was beneficial to bankers in the short run (since it allowed them to foreclose on collateral held for loans), but it could be disastrous to them in the long run (by forcing the value of the collateral below the amount of the loans it secured). But such bankers’ deflation was destructive to business and industry in the short run as well as the long run.